Not necessarily.
Machine learning algorithms like K-means clustering are designed for exactly this sort of problem. In principle, it can figure out that there are two different shirley temple images: Shirley Temple the human; and shirley temple the bright-red drink.
Of course, depending on *how* you wash the image data into something that can be analyzed, it could make unexpected categories like "Shirley Temple black & white" vs "Shirley Temple mostly red" vs "everything else".
Seeing how the competition are free--ChromeOS, Android, and Ubuntu--and consumer-level users arent bound to Windows, Microsoft cant afford to charge for a consumer version of Windows. Not unless theyre giving up consumer space.
Enterprise is a different story, where users are locked in for the foreseeable future.
Yes. Nobody has a lock on the enterprise space.
This area also happened to be RIM's and Microsoft's strongsuit at one point in time. And lest you discount RIM, my gut feeling is that RIM is still very focused whereas Microsoft is spread thin.
Not AC, but you seem quite knowledgeable in the NoSQL side of things. Even if it's just for HBase or Cassandra, if you happen to have a write-up I would love to read more (I'm sure others would too).
Coming from a RDBMS background, being able to tack on columns and use it to glean info is especially interesting to me, since schemas are a sacred cow. Warehouse solutions like Sybase IQ are column-oriented solutions but I don't think this is the same thing as what you're talking about.
Not speaking w/ any authority, but afaik LDAP is just an over-the-wire protocol. It says nothing about the underlying database(s) or what the directory services actually represent.
That said, Open LDAP and LDAP vs RDBMS
"NoSQL" is a highly-misleading name; the SQL language is really besides the point.
The important parts of NoSQL really boils down to:
1. Very high performance.
2. Ability to handle extremely large data (on the order of tens or hundreds of terabytes.).
3. Natural way of dealing with non-flat , non-BLOB data.
4. Better integration with OO languages.
#1 and #2 all come with trade-offs, which is perfectly fine. Not all problems need ACID compliance..
#3 & #4 really goes back to the 90s , though nothing ever stuck (e.g., object-relational databases).
Windows already supports two ways of interacting with the computer: The original command-line shell (discounting powershell for discussion's sake) and the newer explorer shell. And if memory services, it wasn't until Windows 95/NT 4.0 that users could really almost everything from the GUI shell so I'm not surprised that we're seeing a similar evolution with Windows 8.
I also don't think it's a bad thing that Windows 8 desktop is pushing for three input interfaces rather than two; in fact, I suspect most of the critics who've tried Windows 8 desktop and disliked it have only tried with a keyboard+mouse setup. I definitely fall into this category.
And this is where I think Microsoft made a misstep: A mouse and keyboard only ever cost $40-$80 even back in the 1990s. But a small touchscreen monitor costs $250 to $400 whereas a non-touch cost $80 to $150 today for the same size. With dual-screens being very popular, double that price. I'm not aware of any mainstream Windows app requiring touch yet and most people don't make their living trying out new OS features, making it hard to splurge for a touch screen monitor.
That only applies if when traveling faster than light within flat spacetime. A consequence of high speed travel is time dilation, where the elapsed time is noticeably different between, say, the earth and a traveler going at say 1/10th the speed of light.
While the math is beyond me, the Alcubierre drive apparently works around this mess (while introducing others) by contracting spacetime itself. The most notable mess is the requirement of negative mass exotic matter, which we have no way of proving or disproving can even exist. This is the same type of exotic matter which can also be used to open worm-holes.
That said, I would happily fund this sort of research out of my own pocket for the rest of my life. Maybe it's because I've watched/read too much sci-fi but I'd like to think humanity can accomplish far more than than the the Internet and combustion-based travel.
Of course, wait until a global famine hits and see how many 6-foot individuals last.
In the big scheme of things, is being a CEO so important? What do you get out of a it? Perhaps the chance to associate with (or spawn) individuals like the following Rich kids of Instagram?
Psychopathy and other behavior "problems" (binge eating also comes to mind) may have been survival traits during our hunter-gatherer times; these behaviors only become problems in the context of a civilized life. If civilization only goes back to 10k years to our 200k year history--which apparently included a number of ice ages--and given how fragile our civilization is today, I'm not ready to agree we have a moral obligation to start modifying and engineering behavior.
Quite the contrary, I personally believe we have an obligation to let things run their course even if it's cruel to individuals 99 out of 100 times.
Note that on a practical level and as a parent, my feelings and beliefs are just the opposite!
By offering as reason that certain patent becomes crucial before it expires as a reason for being shared, Google is basically shooting down their own argument.
Barring patent-trolling, this is exactly what the patent system was designed to do: Grant a limited monopoly--a short-term disadvantage to everyone else but a high-risk/potentially large-returns investment--to spur constant innovation, which is a long-term benefit to society. Sure, the owner of the patent can choose to share (for a fee of their choosing); but they can also use it as an exclusive seed to build a thriving business. Or do nothing at all.
There are many things wrong with the patent system (too longer? too easy to write spurious patents? too hard/expensive to be a lone inventor), but this isn't one of them and I'm disappointed at Google for voicing a short-term view like this.
Sure there is: If a block of memory doesn't contain a null-terminator--as expected by the library functions--then the item in question isn't a c string.
If you're saying C-strings don't exist because it's purely a standard-library concept, then we'll still have to disagree: The standard libraries make the language as much as the syntax and base-types, and this is even more true for established languages.
Don't get me wrong, I think C will have a very long and robust life: It's the one and only bootstrap language of choice offered by just about every OS and CPU maker.
And I think that it's too bad.
Many of the reasons for wanting to discard C have nothing to do with the low-levelness of C. Dependencies in C are a nightmare to trace, and probably bloats compile times by a tremendous amount. Then there are deadly designs such as C-strings and even worse inconsistencies within the string functions (think null terminator).
A better-designed system language is certainly possible (e.g., Google Go which is dying a slow death,) and it wouldn't be the worst thing to happen if it were to catch on.
Why would you think (since you seem to be agreeing with the poster) that FOSS enables the market?
No developer wants to deal with an unstable (as in constantly changing & fragmenting) ecosystem, and the GPL-branch of FOSS movement does just that.
Perhaps it's ironic that the most popular Linux distro, Android, creates a working ecosystem because its market is closed-source. What would happen if Google made the market open-source from day 1? How would anyone benefit by having N number of competing Android markets to deal with from the get-go?
Can you imagine if carries like Verizon and ATT decided to create their own markets?
You are wrong, and here is why. You dont need to be able to modify the source yourself in order to benefit from it. There are these things called markets, you see. Free software enables a free market, without artificial barriers to entry, and you dont need to be able to make customisations personally to benefit from this.
What are the artificial barriers to entry?
I don't see where anyone has given serious thought to the harmful effects of open source software. In the free market, one of the assumptions is that I will be compensated based purely based on supply and demand of my commercial software product.
And (or "but", depending on your perspective) to encourage innovation, I'm also are granted the right to a short-term monopoly in the form of patents and copyrights. This keeps competitors from gaining a foothold and allows me to grow my work into something that's extremely useful and keeps people employed.
What's left unsaid is this: Any significant piece of machinery requires a significant effort in reverse engineering; at least if somebody hopes to produce a competing version. Why should software be any different? The efforts involved keeps half-hearted attempts from gaining any sort of foothold. This effort in turn keeps the market spared from having dozens of spectacularly inferior products.
And what is a commercial "software product"? Until we make bugfree software on platforms that never change, it's not just the compiled product but also the services involved (bug fixes, feature requests, upgrade paths, etc.). By making software OSS, you've unnecessarily made the barrier of entry unnaturally easy since you're only relying on legal protection to keep the competition at bay.
I definitely think Farhad Manjoo is wrong. If Facebook were to make a phone, I'm sure they wouldn't make it ad-heavy. In fact, I think the phone itself would (or should) be close to ad-free and very inexpensive to make it very compelling to use.
After all, the more targeted and precise the data the more valuable it becomes. One they put a phone in you're hand, they could get info like:
- Who you really are (confirmed ID).
- Some of your habits (e.g., where you tend to eat).
- The people you tend to socialize with on a regular basis.
- The people you (probably) live with..
- If the phone will support a "wallet", your spending habits and probably/baseline income.
- If the agreement includes mining all communication (voice, at least, would probably be illegal), somebody is about to get married, go on vacation, thinking about lunch, etc. i.e., when they're primed for some solicitations
I *think* this is what they're shooting for. But I think Facebook will run into a couple of hurdles when they have to deal with:
1. Wireless service providers. Unless Facebook and Google collaborate and create network of their own (do they have the cash?), or unless they throw the service providers a bone.
2. Regional privacy laws (both Federal and state, for the U.S.).
Disclaimer: I also think Google flipped to creepy & evil a while ago; and also think they're priming to mine some (or all) of this information via Android.
Hmm, didn't realize I posted as AC but...
Nope. Those girls were at the top of the class and I was definitely in the top 4-5. Didn't think I'd have to spell it out in this topic, but I guess somebody (read, you) had to prove the well-belabored point: Guys assume the worst about women with regards to the STEM fields.
My experience tells me otherwise, especially since I've found women (brilliant or not) tend not to toot their own horns in public. In fact, there are rumors that the NSA has a large number of women mathematicians: I think their hook is offering cutting edge work while being family-friendly. The downside? Never getting published/acknowledged in journals for any brilliant accomplishments; something most capable men probably can't stomache.
You must be writing all your software yourself, and auditing all third-party source before you compile it in your audited (or self-written) compiler as it seems you don't see any reason to trust anyone.
Or if you do use software you didn't write or audit yourself: what is your trust in that software based upon?
I doubt Canonical audits everything in their store. The major and default packages? Sure.
But if something bad filters through, what does Canonical really have to lose? They didn't write the malware. In fact, the android market suffers from this problem but it's hardly keeping users away from android smart-phones; even though Google has the means (unlike Canonical) to do a better job and the Java/Dalvik platform makes it easier to weed out the bad apples.
Security is far from the minds of workstation users when compared to software support--will it run XYZ--and how frustrating/helpful an OS is to productivity. And given Windows 7 (no comment on Win 8) has made inroads on all of this PLUS security, Linux is a hard sell.
Yes, but you could also hand the computer directly over to a black hat hacker as well. Doesn't mean the system is any less secure by default, it just means that you're a fucking moron. The operator is always going to be a factor.
A good blackhat hacker would know how to harden the workstation. The point is that the operator is the biggest factor.
Or is it security by being a minority (e.g., think Apple)?
I'm betting even an OpenBSD workstation is prone to become compromised once it's handed over to the average "user", who'll want to download and install unvetted software (etc.). And really, what do I know about the majority of the smaller software packages in the Ubuntu Software Center?
Slashdot Mirror
Not necessarily. Machine learning algorithms like K-means clustering are designed for exactly this sort of problem. In principle, it can figure out that there are two different shirley temple images: Shirley Temple the human; and shirley temple the bright-red drink. Of course, depending on *how* you wash the image data into something that can be analyzed, it could make unexpected categories like "Shirley Temple black & white" vs "Shirley Temple mostly red" vs "everything else".
Seeing how the competition are free--ChromeOS, Android, and Ubuntu--and consumer-level users arent bound to Windows, Microsoft cant afford to charge for a consumer version of Windows. Not unless theyre giving up consumer space. Enterprise is a different story, where users are locked in for the foreseeable future.
Yes. Nobody has a lock on the enterprise space. This area also happened to be RIM's and Microsoft's strongsuit at one point in time. And lest you discount RIM, my gut feeling is that RIM is still very focused whereas Microsoft is spread thin.
Not AC, but you seem quite knowledgeable in the NoSQL side of things. Even if it's just for HBase or Cassandra, if you happen to have a write-up I would love to read more (I'm sure others would too). Coming from a RDBMS background, being able to tack on columns and use it to glean info is especially interesting to me, since schemas are a sacred cow. Warehouse solutions like Sybase IQ are column-oriented solutions but I don't think this is the same thing as what you're talking about.
Why not LDAP?
Not speaking w/ any authority, but afaik LDAP is just an over-the-wire protocol. It says nothing about the underlying database(s) or what the directory services actually represent. That said, Open LDAP and LDAP vs RDBMS
"NoSQL" is a highly-misleading name; the SQL language is really besides the point.
The important parts of NoSQL really boils down to:
1. Very high performance.
2. Ability to handle extremely large data (on the order of tens or hundreds of terabytes.).
3. Natural way of dealing with non-flat , non-BLOB data.
4. Better integration with OO languages.
#1 and #2 all come with trade-offs, which is perfectly fine. Not all problems need ACID compliance..
#3 & #4 really goes back to the 90s , though nothing ever stuck (e.g., object-relational databases).
Windows already supports two ways of interacting with the computer: The original command-line shell (discounting powershell for discussion's sake) and the newer explorer shell. And if memory services, it wasn't until Windows 95/NT 4.0 that users could really almost everything from the GUI shell so I'm not surprised that we're seeing a similar evolution with Windows 8.
I also don't think it's a bad thing that Windows 8 desktop is pushing for three input interfaces rather than two; in fact, I suspect most of the critics who've tried Windows 8 desktop and disliked it have only tried with a keyboard+mouse setup. I definitely fall into this category.
And this is where I think Microsoft made a misstep: A mouse and keyboard only ever cost $40-$80 even back in the 1990s. But a small touchscreen monitor costs $250 to $400 whereas a non-touch cost $80 to $150 today for the same size. With dual-screens being very popular, double that price. I'm not aware of any mainstream Windows app requiring touch yet and most people don't make their living trying out new OS features, making it hard to splurge for a touch screen monitor.
Ugh. Now you're just pandaring to the crowd.
That only applies if when traveling faster than light within flat spacetime. A consequence of high speed travel is time dilation, where the elapsed time is noticeably different between, say, the earth and a traveler going at say 1/10th the speed of light.
While the math is beyond me, the Alcubierre drive apparently works around this mess (while introducing others) by contracting spacetime itself. The most notable mess is the requirement of negative mass exotic matter, which we have no way of proving or disproving can even exist. This is the same type of exotic matter which can also be used to open worm-holes.
That said, I would happily fund this sort of research out of my own pocket for the rest of my life. Maybe it's because I've watched/read too much sci-fi but I'd like to think humanity can accomplish far more than than the the Internet and combustion-based travel.
Of course, wait until a global famine hits and see how many 6-foot individuals last.
In the big scheme of things, is being a CEO so important? What do you get out of a it? Perhaps the chance to associate with (or spawn) individuals like the following Rich kids of Instagram?
Psychopathy and other behavior "problems" (binge eating also comes to mind) may have been survival traits during our hunter-gatherer times; these behaviors only become problems in the context of a civilized life. If civilization only goes back to 10k years to our 200k year history--which apparently included a number of ice ages--and given how fragile our civilization is today, I'm not ready to agree we have a moral obligation to start modifying and engineering behavior. Quite the contrary, I personally believe we have an obligation to let things run their course even if it's cruel to individuals 99 out of 100 times. Note that on a practical level and as a parent, my feelings and beliefs are just the opposite!
By offering as reason that certain patent becomes crucial before it expires as a reason for being shared, Google is basically shooting down their own argument. Barring patent-trolling, this is exactly what the patent system was designed to do: Grant a limited monopoly--a short-term disadvantage to everyone else but a high-risk/potentially large-returns investment--to spur constant innovation, which is a long-term benefit to society. Sure, the owner of the patent can choose to share (for a fee of their choosing); but they can also use it as an exclusive seed to build a thriving business. Or do nothing at all. There are many things wrong with the patent system (too longer? too easy to write spurious patents? too hard/expensive to be a lone inventor), but this isn't one of them and I'm disappointed at Google for voicing a short-term view like this.
Sure there is: If a block of memory doesn't contain a null-terminator--as expected by the library functions--then the item in question isn't a c string. If you're saying C-strings don't exist because it's purely a standard-library concept, then we'll still have to disagree: The standard libraries make the language as much as the syntax and base-types, and this is even more true for established languages.
Don't get me wrong, I think C will have a very long and robust life: It's the one and only bootstrap language of choice offered by just about every OS and CPU maker. And I think that it's too bad.
Many of the reasons for wanting to discard C have nothing to do with the low-levelness of C. Dependencies in C are a nightmare to trace, and probably bloats compile times by a tremendous amount. Then there are deadly designs such as C-strings and even worse inconsistencies within the string functions (think null terminator).
A better-designed system language is certainly possible (e.g., Google Go which is dying a slow death,) and it wouldn't be the worst thing to happen if it were to catch on.
Some of the science is dated, but the stories are short (18 in all) & they're all quite good.
But hey, competition is awesome, amiright?
Competition sucks, but it's the best we have. Even Socialists recognized the need for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_competition
Why would you think (since you seem to be agreeing with the poster) that FOSS enables the market?
No developer wants to deal with an unstable (as in constantly changing & fragmenting) ecosystem, and the GPL-branch of FOSS movement does just that.
Perhaps it's ironic that the most popular Linux distro, Android, creates a working ecosystem because its market is closed-source. What would happen if Google made the market open-source from day 1? How would anyone benefit by having N number of competing Android markets to deal with from the get-go?
Can you imagine if carries like Verizon and ATT decided to create their own markets?
You are wrong, and here is why. You dont need to be able to modify the source yourself in order to benefit from it. There are these things called markets, you see. Free software enables a free market, without artificial barriers to entry, and you dont need to be able to make customisations personally to benefit from this.
What are the artificial barriers to entry?
I don't see where anyone has given serious thought to the harmful effects of open source software. In the free market, one of the assumptions is that I will be compensated based purely based on supply and demand of my commercial software product.
And (or "but", depending on your perspective) to encourage innovation, I'm also are granted the right to a short-term monopoly in the form of patents and copyrights. This keeps competitors from gaining a foothold and allows me to grow my work into something that's extremely useful and keeps people employed.
What's left unsaid is this: Any significant piece of machinery requires a significant effort in reverse engineering; at least if somebody hopes to produce a competing version. Why should software be any different? The efforts involved keeps half-hearted attempts from gaining any sort of foothold. This effort in turn keeps the market spared from having dozens of spectacularly inferior products.
And what is a commercial "software product"? Until we make bugfree software on platforms that never change, it's not just the compiled product but also the services involved (bug fixes, feature requests, upgrade paths, etc.). By making software OSS, you've unnecessarily made the barrier of entry unnaturally easy since you're only relying on legal protection to keep the competition at bay.
I definitely think Farhad Manjoo is wrong. If Facebook were to make a phone, I'm sure they wouldn't make it ad-heavy. In fact, I think the phone itself would (or should) be close to ad-free and very inexpensive to make it very compelling to use. After all, the more targeted and precise the data the more valuable it becomes. One they put a phone in you're hand, they could get info like: - Who you really are (confirmed ID). - Some of your habits (e.g., where you tend to eat). - The people you tend to socialize with on a regular basis. - The people you (probably) live with.. - If the phone will support a "wallet", your spending habits and probably/baseline income. - If the agreement includes mining all communication (voice, at least, would probably be illegal), somebody is about to get married, go on vacation, thinking about lunch, etc. i.e., when they're primed for some solicitations I *think* this is what they're shooting for. But I think Facebook will run into a couple of hurdles when they have to deal with: 1. Wireless service providers. Unless Facebook and Google collaborate and create network of their own (do they have the cash?), or unless they throw the service providers a bone. 2. Regional privacy laws (both Federal and state, for the U.S.). Disclaimer: I also think Google flipped to creepy & evil a while ago; and also think they're priming to mine some (or all) of this information via Android.
genetically less apt is probably a bad turn of phrase. they can do it they just find it less interesting.
Awkward phrasing. But he said "genetically less apt to LIKE..." (emphasis mine), which I think the jury is still out on.
Hmm, didn't realize I posted as AC but... Nope. Those girls were at the top of the class and I was definitely in the top 4-5. Didn't think I'd have to spell it out in this topic, but I guess somebody (read, you) had to prove the well-belabored point: Guys assume the worst about women with regards to the STEM fields. My experience tells me otherwise, especially since I've found women (brilliant or not) tend not to toot their own horns in public. In fact, there are rumors that the NSA has a large number of women mathematicians: I think their hook is offering cutting edge work while being family-friendly. The downside? Never getting published/acknowledged in journals for any brilliant accomplishments; something most capable men probably can't stomache.
You must be writing all your software yourself, and auditing all third-party source before you compile it in your audited (or self-written) compiler as it seems you don't see any reason to trust anyone.
Or if you do use software you didn't write or audit yourself: what is your trust in that software based upon?
I doubt Canonical audits everything in their store. The major and default packages? Sure. But if something bad filters through, what does Canonical really have to lose? They didn't write the malware. In fact, the android market suffers from this problem but it's hardly keeping users away from android smart-phones; even though Google has the means (unlike Canonical) to do a better job and the Java/Dalvik platform makes it easier to weed out the bad apples. Security is far from the minds of workstation users when compared to software support--will it run XYZ--and how frustrating/helpful an OS is to productivity. And given Windows 7 (no comment on Win 8) has made inroads on all of this PLUS security, Linux is a hard sell.
Yes, but you could also hand the computer directly over to a black hat hacker as well. Doesn't mean the system is any less secure by default, it just means that you're a fucking moron. The operator is always going to be a factor.
A good blackhat hacker would know how to harden the workstation. The point is that the operator is the biggest factor.
Or is it security by being a minority (e.g., think Apple)? I'm betting even an OpenBSD workstation is prone to become compromised once it's handed over to the average "user", who'll want to download and install unvetted software (etc.). And really, what do I know about the majority of the smaller software packages in the Ubuntu Software Center?
That was amazing. Thank you.